


Like Lithium

by hitlikehammers



Series: Like Alchemy [2]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Love, M/M, Reunion Sex, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Star Trek: Into Darkness Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-21
Updated: 2013-06-21
Packaged: 2017-12-15 16:07:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/851451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing is, it’s still sour in the pit of his stomach, in the swell of his chest. It’s still difficult to swallow around when Leonard thinks on it too hard, but the blood beneath him's new enough to be enthralled at this, enraptured, because it’s never known such heat.</p><p>And it's not a sin to want this, to need this. By god, it’s anything <i>but</i>.</p><p>  Sequel to <b><a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/806994">Like Antimony</a></b>.</p><p>  <i>Spoilers for <b>Star Trek Into Darkness</b>.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Lithium

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weepingnaiad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad/gifts).



> For [weepingnaiad](http://weepingnaiad.livejournal.com/profile), because she's wonderful, and she deserves a fic.

It’s the tone that makes him sure.

The lights are low, seventeen percent; the air is thick with sweat, with heat and need and aching, with hearts close enough to breaking they may as well be fractured; blood new enough to be enthralled at this, enraptured, because it’s never known such heat.

It’s still sour in the pit of his stomach, in the swell of his chest. It’s still difficult to swallow around when Leonard thinks on it too hard, but when that keen rings out, the tone of that voice: the pitch of that cry is all honey and wine, plasma and ore—the way it resonates, plays around the room like joy and death defied above their panting, the way it expands and shudders tight between his ribs, and the fact that it’s Jim whose breath Leonard is choking on.

The fact that it’s _Jim_ , whose pulse he can tease out from where he’s sheathed inside him, whose eyes are bright and not lifeless, and there’s not a shard of glass in sight: it’s everything and so much more that drives Leonard closer, deeper, that draws a sharp gasp as Leonard lowers himself chest to chest with his lover, his captain, his world and rocks painfully, hatefully, gorgeously close against Jim’s hips so that they’re both sure it’s real, if only because their hearts will pound as long as they can until they can’t, and if they’re both still gasping, they’ll know that it was true. 

And it’s not a crime that Leonard’s stuck on the flush of Jim’s cheeks; he’s not ashamed that he stares at the color there, watches the rise and fall of that chest sometimes when there’s no good reason save the only good reason, the only reason for any of it to keep spinning with a purpose or a prayer. It’s not a crime that when Jim bites down on his swollen bottom lip too hard as Leonard thrusts in sharp, short, angry strokes—bites hard and breaks the skin, it’s not a crime when the blood’s almost the same shade as that bruised flesh; it’s not a sin that Leonard leans to lick it up and entertains the impossibility of teasing out what blood is Jim’s, and what blood isn’t, right against his tongue.

It isn’t a sin when Leonard pulls out before either of them climaxes, just to hear the whine catch in Jim’s throat around the gasping.

Just to slide down that body—too thin, now, but still so fucking sweet—and take Jim in hand, to tease his slit with the lines of his thumbprint and echo the shudder it brings; just to cup Jim beneath and squeeze firm as Leonard guides that thick length between his lips and yes, Leonard knows what Jim tastes like, craves it like life against the black between the stars.

The arch of Jim’s spine as Leonard reaches to tease Jim’s widened entrance, just as he relishes the clench of those muscles against the touch, against the way he grazes the lightest trace of teeth at the base of Jim’s length and feels him twitch against the hollows of his cheeks: the arch is imperfect, stretches skin against stark bones but Leonard can see the lines of muscles reasserting, reclaiming authority, and if his own inhales shake, if they land wrong so that the exhales are too fast, so that he screws his eyes closed as he sucks Jim’s shaft and kneads the soft flesh of his ass and memorizes it all over again because it could have been lost, it _was_ lost and he’d been _lost_ —

There are fingers, tight fingers grasping at the shorts of his hair, just at the neck, and if he looks up into those blue eyes, unbearably open, too clear: if he looks up through his own glaze of feeling, he can’t be faulted.

The sound he makes is wrecked, is low and wet and wounded in the coming as Jim coaxes him, wordless, to press lips against lips, to map tastebuds and lap at the promise of metal where the skin’s still split, where there’s a gateway in and through and Leonard needs this, he needs this because he lost his heart on a shuttle and it shriveled in the cold when its last beats shivered, and it skipped and tripped and fell, skidded on pavements and danced over coals until it could beat again, until it could live again and it’s still sore, it’s still hard to remember that there’s air in the room and there’s blood in his veins and there’s light behind his eyes at all because Jim can breathe and Jim can move and think and feel and be: it’s hard, because there are parts of him that remember, but still parts that can’t forget and there’s a difference—the sort of difference that cuts where blades can’t reach, where healing is a scarce sort of thing.

Jim’s hands are soft, steady, and god, are they strong as he presses the pads of his fingers into the flesh of Leonard’s hips, draws them together and rocks their straining cocks in time, and there is friction, yes, and there is absolutely need: there is desperation and a latent kind of hopelessness that makes their breathing sound like sobs, but that’s not what they cling to. 

Jim’s hand comes between them and lines their lengths inside his palm, pulsing out of sync within his grip, and Jim meets Leonard’s gaze in the dark, coal diamonds in the din, and with each stroke Jim promises nameless things. Leonard rocks into Jim’s body, and their chests are flush for a moment before he shifts, drags their shafts against each other with a perverse sort of fluidity, a vicious sort of grace before he slides back down through Jim’s grasp, before their chests press again, and he doesn’t expect Jim to stop them, to press his weight against Leonard’s, and it’s partially the force—beautiful weight, undeniable _life_ —but it’s partially the surprise that arrests Leonard, that keeps him still long enough to feel it, to feel the reassertion of the only muscle that really matters, that _ever_ mattered, pumping hard, fluttering fierce against him, and if Leonard can’t breathe for a moment, if his chest constricts and his lungs forget their work as his blood sings, as he sucks at Jim’s lip until he mines iron and swallows gold: it’s not a sin.

By god, it’s anything _but_.

Jim strokes them hard now, fast and heady, but it’s not the pressure between them—it’s the soft touch of Jim’s free palm to the curve of Leonard’s jaw, the molding of the life line to the jut of bone: that’s what sends him reeling, sends him shaking, leaves him burning with the sound of Jim’s strangled cry and the spill of his release against Leonard’s skin and he wants to see, he wants to watch that chest spasm with the breaths it can chase but never catch, wants to see those eyes open wide before they slip closed with the rush, the momentum of the undertow, but it’s too late: Leonard feels the build and the bliss and the wonder, and it’s close; he can’t.

He’s gone.


End file.
